Labor to Rest (Gratitude II)

The Scripture offers extensive commentary on the history of Israel’s desert wanderings. The writer of Psalm 95 captures the nation’s refusal to trust God like this:

  Come, let us worship and bow down.
            Let us kneel before the Lord our maker, for he is our God.
            We are the people he watches over, the flock under his care.
If only you would listen to his voice today!
            The Lord says, “Don’t harden your hearts as Israel did at Meribah,
            as they did at Massah in the wilderness.
            For there your ancestors tested and tried my patience,
            even though they saw everything I did.
            For forty years I was angry with them, and I said,
            ‘They are a people whose hearts turn away from me.
            They refuse to do what I tell them.’
            So in my anger I took an oath: ‘They will never enter my place of rest.’”[1]

In Exodus 16, the Israelites complained about the lack of food, and God provided manna, literal bread from heaven. But immediately after, in Exodus 17, the Israelites complained again at Massah and Meribah (which mean “testing” and “quarreling”) because they thought they were going to die of thirst. A reasonable fear, except that, as the Psalm reminds us, they had just seen God do amazing things. The problem then, was not a reasonable fear but rather hardness of heart. Hardness of heart is like eyes that can’t see, and it happens because of unbelief and lack of trust. This unbelief becomes embodied in grumbling and complaining, which is why the writer of Hebrews, much later, tells us:

See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God….As has just been said: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, as you did in the rebellion.” …We see that [the Israelites] were not able to enter [The Promised Land], because of their unbelief.[2]

The people were not willing to trust God’s goodness and His provision, which is the sign and symptom of a hard, unbelieving heart. And the warning for us is clear: don’t let your hearts go the same way! To be a sinner is to be trapped in an unending tendency towards worry and grumbling and complaining. But we can choose a different path. We can “labor to rest,” as the writer of Hebrews then tells us:[3]

There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from his. Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest [labor to rest], so that no one will perish by following their example of disobedience.[4]

Against the drift into grumbling, complaining, and hard-heartedness, there is one work: laboring to rest. What a paradox! Laboring to cease striving. To cease trying to make life work—or to make God work—on our own terms, and entering instead into surrender and trust. By this posture we are led into the provision of God. We are able to rest even when we don’t have all the answers. 

How fitting that right before the rebellions in Exodus 16 and 17, God had told the people: “The Lord himself will fight for you. Just stay calm.”[5] Or “you need only be still,” as one translation reads.[6] The work of the Israelites in the desert was not to take the Promised Land or even to ensure that they would survive; it was rather to learn to trust, which would lead them into all the provision they needed. Just as we labor to rest in The Jesus Paradigm in order to step out of The Human Paradigm, so we labor to rest in our trust of God, which keeps our hearts from getting hard. 

How do we do this? And how do we make this sort of rest and trust habitual? What’s the antidote to endless self-focus, scarcity-thinking, and grumbling and complaining? We turn back to Psalm 95, verse 1:

Come, let us sing to the Lord!           
Let us shout joyfully to the Rock of our salvation.
Let us come to him with thanksgiving.[7]

Come let us worship and give thanks. Let us walk in gratitude. The writer of this Psalm tells us both that the Israelites drifted into grumbling because their hearts became hard, and that we are able to keep our hearts soft by worshipping and giving thanks. 

For all of these readings in one place, order my book 'Learning to Live and Love Like Jesus.'

[1] Psalm 95:6-11.

[2] Hebrews 3:12, 15, 19.

[3] Hebrews 4:11, as rendered in the King James Version.

[4] Hebrews 4:9-11.

[5] Exodus 14:14.

[6] Exodus 14:14, NIV.

[7] Psalm 95:1-2.